“Offshore processing” of asylum claims is driven by racism + xenophobia alone. When Trump suggested similar in the US, there was outcry. Now, the BBC calmly questions if it’s workable? This an effective way to drag policy to the right...
1/?

It follows news that the gov is looking at outsourcing asylum adjudication (guaranteeing % rejection “targets” are valued over the rule of law) & a Home Office attack on “activist lawyers” (any lawyer defending clients against the state’s unlawful deportations)
2/?

It follows months of advocacy around people held in UK detention centers during the pandemic — privatized sites of abuse, trauma & exploitation from which most people are simply, eventually, released (ie there were no grounds to hold them)
3/?

Housing for asylum seekers has also been privatized. It is low cost to the state, with responsibility for unlivable, damp, cramped, rat-infested accommodation outsourced. Slum landlords get knuckles wrapped in Parliamentary hearings... then win a new contract a year later
4/?

The Mears Group placed 400 asylum seekers into a hotel in Glasgow during the pandemic, denying them money; effectively imprisoning them on site. Social + health workers raised repeated alarm about risks to health. Serco simply changes locks on houses, making people destitute
5/?

Legal aid has been stripped back year on year for decades, meaning that those asylum seekers unable to afford a private lawyer are likely to be represented by an over-stretched representative, able to work mere hours even on complex cases (see @JoWilding1 on this topic)
6/?

As far right groups organize to harass asylum seekers upon arrival, or in their “safe” hotel accommodation, the government is raising the spectre of Navy patrols; banning rescue boats. There is zero evidence that such “deterrents” work. People just drown unseen
7/?

The very small number of people seeking asylum in the UK — barred from working, costing little to house (much more to detain) having broken no law — are already deeply mistreated. That’s just not enough to sustain jingoistic fantasies about “control” in the current context...
8/?

So here we are (as a death toll rises & Brexit deals falter), “discussing” imprisoning people for merely exercising their right to seek asylum, to be abused (further) out of sight + mind. Our structurally racist nation-state has been marching this way for decades
/END

CITATIONS/ RESOURCES:
@MissingMigrants on crossings stats; @Right_to_Remain @DetentionForum on detention; @PositiveActionH on accommodation (inc Mears contracts); @BehrouzBoochani on realities of “offshoring”; @SocialWorkersWB on social support; @ColinYeo1 + @JoWilding1 on law

On detention + covid: https://www.redpepper.org.uk/immigration-detention-and-the-politics-of-covid-19/; on privatization of asylum housing: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/john-grayson/; on immigration justice + law @JCWI_UK; on deportations @LukeEdeNoronha; on British racism + borders @NadineElEnany... many more, please add in replies